Feature: Men standing up for the rights of women!

Ajay with Brian Cross at the Vancouver Rape Relief event

The Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter recently hosted a party called, "Jazz and Jam: With Toasts to Fellow Travellers" to honour the long-standing alliance between men and women who have been organizing for social change since the early 1970s.

Last year, Rape Relief honoured the contributions of, Brian Cross, a member of the House Funding Committee which comprises mostly men who were around right from the beginning and agreed to use their privileged position in society to raise money and give it freely to the two women who started the rape crisis line in 1973.

It was the first of it's kind in Canada and the second in North America.

Cross, who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis (MS), has been wheel-chair bound for a very long time. But that has never deterred him from remaining active politically.

At the Jazz and Jam event, Rape Relief toasted three outstanding men - Cross, Grant Huston and Adam Abrams for their work in organizing with rape relief for a decade, using their particular attributes to advance the political objective of dismantling patriarchy through supporting the independent women's movement.

My son, Ajay Parasram, was given the honour of speaking at the event. He chose the occasion to say goodbye to the group as he leaves British Columbia to pursue his doctoral studies at Carleton Univertsity in Ottawa.

His speech (with some editing) in transcribed below:

In September 2008 I found myself in a Vietnamese restaurant opposite my partner Fazeela, who was trying to make a difficult decision. She was a freshly graduated teacher with a steady job in her field. Then Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter came along and told her she was just the woman they were looking for.

The woman who ran the restaurant came over and sat with us. After a brief scolding for not visiting more often, she asked, “What’s the problem?”

Fazeela explained the situation. The woman looked at her and said, “Forget what you think you’re supposed to do, what do you want to do? Five years down the road you will still have your degrees, but when next will you have the opportunity to be a rape crisis worker?”

Fazeela was sold. I was concerned.

But she quit her job and embarked down a road of consciousness raising that would awaken within her a fierce determination to creatively and effectively confront patriarchy and misogyny, while offering empathy and compassion for those who endure it.

This is a character trait shared amongst the inspiring women of the Rape Relief collective. What I never imagined at the time is how much her decision to actively join the women’s movement would transform our relationship, my own political awareness, and our individual and shared trajectories throughout the rest of our lives.

Later that year, Rape Relief (RR) put on a staggeringly impressive conference called Flesh Mapping: Vancouver Markets Pacific Women.

I remember sitting in my office at the Asia Pacific Foundation, quietly watching the discussions and deliberations of Pacific-Rim feminists on my computer. I remember the incredible artistic creations on display at the Gallery Gache...

On December 6, 2008 the collective put on a public conference in remembrance of the Montreal Massacre. I heard feminists talk about the legal system, Simon de Boivre, surviving prostitution, and the intersection of race, class, and gender oppression.

I was seeing the political theorizing I studied in the academy come to life in the praxis of radical feminism.

I want to emphasis the word “praxis” here. As an aspiring academic, theory is very important to me, (some might say too important to me...) but Action in the absence of theory is blind; theory in the absence of action is self-indulgent.

But praxis, the application of theory that is informed by experience and intellectual rigour, is transformative; is revolutionary.

I met a nice man named Brian at the conference who invited me to a meeting of mostly men who worked under the leadership of Rape Relief and raised money for the transition house.

It didn’t sound like my thing - I despised fundraising and was never really politically active. Besides, what’s so political about raising money? As I would soon discover, men using their position of privilege in society to raise money with no strings attached for a feminist project is indeed a political act.

Men offering child care so women can organize themselves and challenge the injustices of their society as they experience it, is a political act - not just because it frees up time for women to take action, but because it directly challenges the sexist assumption that childcare is the domain of women and not men.

Working with my friends and allies on the House Funding committee is praxis, transforming deeply entrenched gendered expectations and hierarchy.

Organizing with the men in the House Funding committee afforded me the opportunity to begin raising my own political consciousness, confronting the contradictions within my life, and equipping me with the confidence and support I need to transform that which society dictates as being “masculine.”

Let me offer a concrete example to anchor some of these rhetorical proclamations. Wearing my sign, pamphlets and Tin Can in hand, I was soliciting passer-bys for donations during one of our monthly fundraisers.

A small group of men approached me in the crowd and one punched me in the stomach. It caught me off guard, and I turned to see them snickering as they walked off...

I realized that to be a man in active support of an equality-seeking feminist project that challenges male supremacy makes one a traitor to the status quo; a traitor to the deeply entrenched norm that dictates women’s subordination to men.

My friends, it feels DAMN good to be a traitor to injustice!

I’m leaving House Funding...because I am moving to Ottawa to go to school. I cannot imagine being in this city and not organizing with House Funding in support of the independent women’s movement.

Men are also the beneficiaries of the feminist struggle for a better, more equitable society for all, yet too often, men become defensive rather than supportive.

I am grateful to the feminists and pro-feminist men in whose excellent, smashing company I have had the privilege of learning, organizing and struggling.

Though mountains and prairie farmlands will keep me from physically participating in the activities of House Funding and Rape Relief, nothing can reverse the chain of events that started at the Vietnamese Restaurant in September of 2008...

I will find new ways to take action in Ottawa...I propose a toast to fellow travellers. If you don’t have a glass in your hand, no worries, a raised fist will do just fine! Long live the alliance between feminists and pro-feminist men!

May we continue to take our leadership from those who live the reality of gendered oppression, may we, the men, follow our feminist allies on the Long March to Patriarchy’s utter dismantling.

We transform our society through praxis: may we never, never surrender!